Saturday 13 December 2008

LeboLust

This place is amazing! Gorgeous, and I mean gorgeous people. Holy crap. Emiratis - not so much. But Lebanese... or Libonaise en francais... are drop dead.

The downtown is hilly, with buildings clinging to steep streets, and the centre of the city GLITTERS with lights and style. It's true - it's looks a lot like the Paris of the Orient and could have been pulled from one of the fanciest bits of Europe. Who knew Lebanon was this prosperous... at least the parts I've seen.
The American University of Beirut has a stunning campus, too, perched on a lush hill cascading down to the sea - beautiful architecture, easily nicer than most Candian campuses, with a dazzling Mediterranean backdrop.

It's a bizarre place too though because there are relics fom the civil war that raged for 15 years and only ended around 1990. Like the TOWERING old Holiday Inn, which only was open for a year or two before snipers took over it and used it as an aerial war perch. It's riddled with bullet holes, has chunks missing and still has tattered curtains fluttering out of its windows. And it's at least 30 storeys tall, easily dominating that part of the skyline.
That said, it seems as though half of the downtown has been built or beautifully restored in about the past 4 years, and lots of construction is underway as well. Shiny new skyscrapers right on the ocean.
Again, you'd think you were in Europe...

EXCEPT... for the everpresent diesel fumes, and, more arrestingly, for the fact that the main cafe-FILLED square and the streets radiating from it beneath the hilltop parliament is closed to car traffic with temporary-looking metal barricades you'd expect to see surrounding a conference of world leaders. These, I assume, have been in place since the war with Israel a couple of years ago and the instability thereafter. Plus, there are checkpoints for pedestrians manned by camoflauge-clad soldiers with very large MACHINE GUNS slung round their necks and who search the purses of those entering the district. Generally, I feel safer than I do in Canada, simply because there is so much security mingled about with the BMWs and the impeccably dressed Lebs.
Anyway, all of this creates a fascinating place, with the Mediterranean lapping at the sea wall on three sides of the city - downtown is on a rocky hilly penninsula.

Went to a packed gay club last night called Acid - the nightlife here is infinitely superior to Abu Dhabi's, at least for what I'm looking for ie. hot guys, hot music, no ridiculous door policies, no hideous cookie-cutter syled bargoers, and deintely no inflated $70 cover for men without a female slung on their shoulders, ala Abu. It was US$10 for cover including a completely open bar. And yes, I vomited this morning after all-I-could-drink. It'd been years since that'd happened... until I moved to this ironically booze-soaked region.
Plus, people party until dawn, and throw after parties and actually have some killer style, in general, although some of the over-accessorising and spazzy jeans can be over the top and try-hardish.
A massive added bonus is that the night front desk manager at my hotel is a HOT GAY, so I have a personal nightlife adviser at my disposal. We awkwardly beat around that bush last night when I was asking for nightclub advice, and he warned me which one was "full of gays," but then opened up about all the hot-and-not places once I said "that's okay" to the sausage fest. Apparently, Acid goes lesbionic tonight, so it's best avoided.
Couldn't have worked out any better, and I still have Saturday night ahead of me.

O, how I wish I wasn't STILL hungover... at 10pm.
A quick half bottle of red will cure that, I'm certain!

Now, off to figure out what club to go tonight, and where to dine... and drink alone!

Friday 12 December 2008

Leba-what?

Jesus. Or Allah. Or who the hell cares.
I just randomly booked a trip to Beirut. For TOMORROW.
I'm going to need to pay those pakistani laundry boys a pretty dirham to get my clothes back by closing time at noon.
Gotta look good for the Lebs.
OMG! Can't wait!

Wednesday 10 December 2008

I passed

Yesterday was report card day, and I got lots of good checkmarks.
It was like elementary school again, with boxes for 'exceeds', 'meets', and the dreaded 'does not meet' job requirements.
So, I've passed my three-month probation a few days early, and with it have reaped my furniture allowance that will instead go to paying off my pesky student loan. Well, paying a chunk of it off, anyway.

Final verdict: 5 exceeds to 4 meets.

Monday 8 December 2008

Are you kidding MEid?

The dawn of the Eid holiday here in the Abu Dhabs brings with it the most inexcusably wretched, solemn, minaret-blasted cleric chants from the ubiquitous mosque. For HOURS.
Who wants to listen to this crap for so long, anyway? Are they truly kidding themselves? I mean, surely, all religious people are, right? Why not devout Muslims?

...Okay, so a few days have gone by since I bitched above. It's really just holy Friday's endless droning, with no melody and with boredom creeping into the cleric's voice that I can't stand. So the thing I've got to clear up is that the calls to prayer are actually beautiful – even if they're akin to something that might drift out of a 1920s gramophone, complete with crackle. But that's part of their niche, I think. There's nothing in the world that sounds quite like a Muslim city being called to pray.

For better or worse, but it grows on you after awhile.

F- it

There's no excuse for a lack of appreciation for the arts. And if the attempted excuse harps on some frail, sad reality that an opportunity never arose to support a flourishing, vibrant and diverse culture and respect for visual and performing arts in that particular culture... than I'm afraid that's a terrible loss. There's no equivalent that can come close to harbouring the emotion and expression that is so crucial to living a rewarding, exciting and fully satisfying (subjective or not) way of life.
How did people in so many lands get by without it for so long? What a tragedy. If only they could have written their own wrenching plays about it.
I try not to be single-minded when I think like this. But how can anything replace the importance of the Arts, western or otherwise? They're just so important.
And neither religion, nor family, nor God, nor sand, nor complacency, nor entitlement nor pride can ever replace that, in my shallow, inept and predictable way of thinking, I guess.
So what I guess. Life's not a competition.
Well, actually, that's all it is. That's exactly what it is. If you don't outdo everone else, you're an insignificant fuck.

Saturday 6 December 2008

Wet Christmas

Much like the chaos/excited buzz caused by a few damp flakes of snow on the maritime shores of the 'couv, the Emirates have been atwitter with rain fever the past few days. Radio announcers discus driving tips and hold call-in shows for needy listeners to ring up and talk about whether they like the rain better... or the sun. Woo, the stimulation.
So anyway, it rained today, and not for a minute – for like, the entire morning. The thunder woke me up, and the weather nerd in me admits to leaping out of bed, throwing open my brown ultra-suede drapes (hey, they block out the light) and shoving my head out into the raindrops. Seriously, I felt the same way I used to when the rain turned to sleet in Vancouver.You know, those times when the city descended into outward, airwave-choking disdain for the "chance it might stick," but we all secretly had one hand behind our backs, fingers crossed, that we could, for a day, play in snow.
But back to the desert...
You should see how this place floods with a few milimetres of rain. Sure, there are storm drains. But I'm sure there is also 10 months of dust and garbage clogging them up, and this pervasive sentiment that, eh, it doesn't really rain here pretty sums up the attitude to their maintenance.
But apparently, year after year, the same floods of oily, gritty ashphalt water pool over the streets. From the non rain, I guess.

Christmas decorations are in store for tomorrow. I guess I'll be ramming a petroleum-based Noble Fir into the back seat of a cab tomorrow. I guess, in a way, I'm buying locally! At least I'm no longer scorched to embers when trying in vain to hail a taxi. It was cool, green and bright, like a whole new breezy city after the rains cleared.

But like I'm sure you're all aware, when the conversation turns to the weather... you've got nothing left to say.

Except that I dowloaded the entire Kenny Rogers Christmas Greetings album. With the original track listing from its 1981 release. How's that for festive?

Monday 1 December 2008

Ultimate George

How does this place do it? In the span of a year, the planet's most homosexually 'sinful' western pop stars have taken centre stage in this little Gulf nation's entertainment line-up. Justin, Elton, Christina, Celine, Kylie, and now, perhaps most out there of all (glory hole, anyone?... dont worry, the stadium toilets were rife with well-meant jokes) the gayest of all 'mo superstars, bathroom stall Sally, George Michael himself. And for his final show EVER, as well.
A twist I liked, the irony not lost at ALL... was his final song. His swansong. In the absolute monarchy of the UAE: FREEDOM
Don't worry. After seven cans of Heineken, I'd already changed the title lyric, 'freedom', to "democracy", and belted it about the stadium. Oooops.
You think it got a good response? Well, it didn't get a bad one. Because, you see, the crowd, to put it lightly, sucked ass. And not in the good way. Like literally, there were guys standing there, at Mr Michael's last, ultimate, final show, barely moving a disinterested, I'm-only-here-because-my-Nottingham-slag-ho-dragged-me-here, how-fucking-long-is the-cab ride-back-to-Dubai-where-white-people-live-going-to-be, I-wish-I-were-in-this-stadium-watching-football-rather-than-faggy-frivolity, muscle. The crowd should have been dripping with sentimental nostalgia, begging for more and egging on the last gasp of Georgie's career. However, they instead rushed the gates before, get this, even the FIRST encore. Never mind the third, I think it was, which was, (un?)fittingly, Freedom.
Guess you can't pipe in culture, along with an appreciation for it, afterall.
Shit, better retune the city's tourism sights. Will $500million for the Louvre name to put down desert roots really translate into anything really appreciated?
Or... gasp… relevant?
Bedtime. Gotta turn down the nose-running air conditioner first.

Gotta start somewhere...

I think it's pretty rad to kick off this new outlet of attempted wit and observation by painting a wee picture of press freedom in this fair Gulf state. It's not that censorship is at play here... just more of a fear of chopping off the hand that feeds us newspaper employees, and in turn, well-paid minions of the Sheikh, President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi.

Everyone's heard about The Palm– you know, that little tree-shaped island jutting into the Gulf, visible from space, showered in the world's biggest fireworks, yadda yadda... well turns out a story was written about some of the island's design flaws, namely, emergency response times.
Think about it. There's only one way in and out of that place. And once an ambulance battles its way through traffic up the trunk of the tree, it's got another kilometre or so to go before getting to the end of those sandy fronds.

The point is, there's a good chance you'd end up dead/charred/robbed before any emergency crews could get to you, and rumour has it that firemen agree.
Just like that, I'm told, the story was killed. As far as I know, it never ran in the paper. Wouldn't want a story in our newspaper to scare off potential property owners wooed by the massive government-backed developer. Which makes sense, I guess, as long as press freedom isn't much of a priority. Afterall, those island villas are selling at well over a million bucks a pop.

Just remember to bring the first aid kid when heading to dinner party at the tip of the tree.